Three Words, Eight Letters
by sofia-carby
Summary: Blair is pregnant and it is easier to fall apart on the other side of the bridge.


**Summary: **Blair is pregnant and it is easier to fall apart on the other side of the bridge.

**A/N:** Just a little thing. I own nothing. Please review!

**Three Words, Eight Letters**

**.1**

This is how it happens:

It is outside. With gravel digging into her back and her dawn-colored dress hiked up somewhere around the birthmark on her inner thigh. In someone's backyard after a party with the pulse burning the inside of her veins and "quick hurry, hurry, hurry" because someone (not him, but he will later) can come and it will all be ruined. So in the late-night golden sun that stretches around his bangs he pushes into her, running his hands down her sides, fitting his fingers into her curves. Summer-limbed and princess-to-be Blair Waldorf fucking Chuck Bass in California on the Fourth of July. Fireworks high above in stark pastel colors; literal, not metaphorical.

After, when his sweat dries on her skin and the cavity of his chest lifts with drunk-sleep, she feels sick of herself. Why is she always getting dragged back into this? Why _now_? So, without waiting for him, she pulls down her dress (her shoes are still on, there hadn't been any time to take them off) and rushes past the house and onto the street. She fetches a cab and goes to Serena's and gets into her bed and falls asleep inhaling blonde hair smelling of pink wine and tangling her toes with Serena's warm ones. The next morning she gets on a plane and goes back to her prince.

When she gets pregnant, she just feels it. In her entire body. It's before the morning sickness, really, before her boobs become tender to the touch. It's a while after -on the hottest day of summer- and her body just purrs. She knows. She's pregnant.

The first person she tells is Dan Humphrey. Of all people. Because Serena isn't there, and minions aren't friends. He just holds her, as she threads apart at the seams, exhausted.

She takes the test. To see who is the other part of _It._

Her hands are trembling like an uneasy ocean -ripples of current- when she opens the letter. Black letters on white paper screaming truth. DNA and numbers and sperm melted and converted into one name.

Chuck Bass.

Her heart sinks so deeply she thinks it has disappeared completely. _Fuck._

**.2**

She decides to keep it. She also decides to tell Louis.

It's in the afternoon, with him across from her at the table. She presses her palms flat against the glass and watches the prints fade. Oh, she just wishes they all did as easily.

"I slept with someone else."

It's easy to say. Easier than she thought it would be. It just rolls off her tongue. A few syllables of something she regrets more than anything else, something that can't be gathered and pushed into neat letters.

"And I'm pregnant."

He just looks at her. Stares; first at her face - which is half-turned away looking at the canopy of spicy red and orange and yellow in Central Park below - and then down her body.

He swallows audibly.

"Who?"

"Chuck Bass."

He inhales, her polite prince. Then he cracks inside-out and she wants to touch him but she can't. She doesn't cry, but he does.

His hands shake as he gets up from the table, knocking the coffee pot over. It leaks over the table like a red-black river but Blair doesn't move. Dorota comes running.

"Whose? Whose is the … baby?"

"Not yours," she whispers.

He leaves her. Just like that, her Cinderella glass shoe gets smashed into a gazillion pieces with sharp edges that can't be put back together.

The wedding gets called off and she still tries to fit in her dress the color of cream. She can't zip it up and tears it apart instead. She goes to Dan, but doesn't cry. He just orders pizza and they watch _Billy Liar, _one of his favorites. He lets her pick it apart.

Her belly swells to the size of a ball. Skin stretching and turning her feet invisible. All the old insecurities come rushing back, and she wants to puke the extra weight away. Flush it down the toilet, get a flat belly, brush her teeth, smile and yes of course, everything is fine. Just fine. Sometimes she feels kicking inside, like s/he wants to get out from there, from the water-life.

_No, you don't,_ she thinks.

She goes to Brooklyn when she feels the first kick. Utters no words, really, just walks into Dan's loft and presses his palm over it. Warm from holding his coffee mug. He looks her in the eye; widens his. He can't help but smile. Then she cries, the entire night. It's easier breaking apart on the other side of the bridge.

"I'm not ready for this. I was going to finish college, and have a career. Have a husband. I had everything planned out."

He caresses her hair, saying nothing until gray dawn seeps over the river.

"You're Blair Waldorf. You can do anything."

He murmurs it softly into her hair. Warm breath on her neck. Exhaling belief. Yes. She is Blair Waldorf. She can do it. She can do anything. Except, not any_one_. Not this person, inside. With ten toes and ten fingers still getting shaped and fitted.

She becomes the talk of the town. Or, the Upper East Side. It's hard to hide under dresses, her water-filled globe. Her feet swell along with it, and she can't even wear flats, let alone heels. That's when she just stops going out altogether.

Dan comes to visit and she speaks to him on the phone every single day. They bicker and argue and it all feels fine. He brings her favorite movies and they watch them in bed and she even lets him crawl under the covers, like he crawled under her skin all those months ago.

Chuck calls her, but she doesn't answer. He comes to see her, but she pretends not to be there. It's easier that way. He doesn't exist in her life, not any longer.

Serena is not as easy to avoid. She stomps into Blair's life again, like she's always done. Sometimes she disappears from the bumpy map that is there friendship, but she always finds her way back. Now she clomps up the stairs in her heels (Dorota lets her in, despite Blair's protests) and plops down on Blair's bed.

"We are going out tonight."

Blair pulls her covers over her head, down suffocating the world. "No, we're not."

Serena snatches the covers away.

"Yes, we are."

"I have nothing to wear."

"Yes, you do."

Serena opens the bags she has with her; filled with maternity clothes. "From Paris," she announces and pulls out a pair of flats. Rosy pink and pretty and a size bigger than Blair usually wears. They fit like a glove.

Then, Serena does her make-up. They are quiet but when it's done they look at each other in the mirror and both break down at the same time. Ugly-crying, but Serena does it better. Blair's cheeks become a soot-colored waterfall and Serena has to do it all over again, but none of them care.

Serena hooks her arm under Blair's and together they carry their heads high on the streets of New York City. The two prettiest girls in New York; plus one.

**.3**

Blair awakens one night in March with her belly stretching. Bending her over, folding into itself. It hurts and she realizes that it's time. Now. The baby is coming _now._

She doesn't look at her phone when she makes the call. Doesn't care that it's three in the morning. Instinct. She's terrified.

"It's happening."

"I'll be there. Whatever you need."

They shine too-bright lights in her face and she sweats cold. Damp between her breasts and her entire body aching. She barely even realizes that it's Dan who takes her to the hospital, his words soft in the shell of her ear. She clutches his fingers together so hard they turn ebony. He doesn't complain as she curses at him and snaps at the nurses because her bed isn't comfortable and then breaks down and sobs against his plaid shirt (with his heart thundering underneath) because this hurts more than Chuck's multiple heart-trashing and Louis' eyes heavy and accusing on hers and her belly.

It happens fast then.

"Are you the father?" they ask Dan.

"There is no father," she answers in gasps. "But he's my friend."

So he stays. During everything. When she screams and trashes and pushes and sighs in relief and exhaustion. He cuts the cord.

She feels like she has been bent the wrong way; her bones jelly and dislocated and put back together but slightly wrong.

When they place her son in her arms, she feels like she's dreamwalking. Somehow, it can't be true. Wrapped in a blanket, with skin like a raisin. Showing him her tonsils, his lungs not quite working. Thrown out into a cold world he knows nothing of. She cradles him, because she knows; _just _knows, what that feels like.

She kisses the crown of her baby's head - gooey and softly curving at the tender top - with wet, black hair. He shivers on her belly, hiccupping into her chest. His eyes are crescents. And she feels this … thing. Something so much greater than Chuck or Louis or even Dan, who stands next to her; his face frost-white and fingers warm on her arm. Never-leaving and something so secure that she almost wants to weep. _Thank you_ doesn't seem sufficient.

What she feels for this tiny creature in her arms is pure and demanding and there. Taking up elephant-space in her heart, weaving around it. Simple. Something she never understood. Love.

She realizes it doesn't matter whose he is. He is Blair's and Blair does not share.

She smiles up at Dan, who smiles back, tiredly. Then he leans over and places the sweetest of kisses against her sweaty temple. A hushed promise of a future holding more.

She looks down and buries her nose between the neck and shoulder of her baby.

"Hi," she whispers into the shivering body that was a part of her minutes ago; forever will be. Something she never expected; wasn't part of her plan. Something perfect. And for the first time in her life, she realizes what three words, eight letters truly, fully mean.


End file.
